Virginia Beach PD and the Safariland 6360 holster

[JAH 3rd]

Saw this article on WTKR website. Issues with the 6360 holster. Posted it here, but feel free to move to another forum if need be. Thoughts?

https://www.wtkr.com/investigations/...-the-past-year

[BK14]

Not sure what the issue they’re saying they had besides being able to reach the trigger. I feel like it’s a requirement by-product of a weapon mounted ALS holster that the trigger guard opening is wider than we’d want in a perfect world. I’ve personally broke an ALS RDS spring, seen a friends fail, and worn out an als mechanism. My old ALS also would “catch” on the ejection port until it was broken in. Now I stay up on having replacement parts, testing fit, and I use a nub mod. We also had issues with 7TS holsters being too tight.

[LukeNCMX]

So it looks like they issue Glocks per some pictures on their Facebook.

It looks like this holster move was done to accommodate Axon's holster bodycam switch in reaction to a high profile shooting.

The PDF in the article has an interesting timeline.

Here's a few things that jumped out:

Jul. 2, 2021
Issued Safariland 7360 to officers to replace the Blackhawk L2D, which could not accommodate the Signal Sidearm.

Oct. 22, 2021
During a struggle at the Virginia Beach General Hospital, an adversary was able to insert his finger into the Safariland 7360 and fire an officer's handgun while holstered.

Feb. 2022
All officers are issued Safariland 6360. Police Academy recruits are trained on the Safariland 6360. The same training will be provided for subsequent classes.

Mar. 17, 2022
concerns and complaints about the Safariland 6360:
1) Poor retention;
2) Access to the weapons trigger by an adversary
3) Difficulty to draw the handgun.

Mar. 24, 2022
While in pursuit of a suspect, an officer could not re-holster his handgun into his Safariland 6360. It was later determined that this holster’s ALS was defective. Subsequent inspection of all Safariland 6360 holsters found that 75% had similar defect. Safariland stated that the ALS was improperly formed and were traced back to one of its two factories. Safariland agreed to replace the defective ones.

May 19, 2022
During a struggle at the Virginia Beach General Hospital, an adversary was able to insert his finger into the Safariland 6360 and fire an officer's handgun while holstered causing a non-life-threatening injury to a second officer.

Jun. 6, 2022
Axon successfully installed Signal Sidearm mounts on all Blackhawk L2D holsters. Since then, Signal Sidearm has been in-use with the Blackhawk L2D holsters.


This has the aroma of an ego battle between admin and line staff over forced holster cams. I'd like an insiders perspective.

[HCM]

Not sure what the issue they’re saying they had besides being able to reach the trigger. I feel like it’s a requirement by-product of a weapon mounted ALS holster that the trigger guard opening is wider than we’d want in a perfect world. I’ve personally broke an ALS RDS spring, seen a friends fail, and worn out an als mechanism. My old ALS also would “catch” on the ejection port until it was broken in. Now I stay up on having replacement parts, testing fit, and I use a nub mod. We also had issues with 7TS holsters being too tight.

We’ve had issues with 6390 RDS holsters being too tight and getting a % of defective with malformed holster body/mouth where the gun could not be holstered with the specified WML attached.

Looks like VBPD has similar issues.

In March, an officer could not re-holster his handgun into the holster, according to the audit. “It was later determined the holster’s ALS was defective. Subsequent inspection of all Safariland 6360 holsters found 75% had a similar defect. Safariland stated that the ALS was improperly formed and was traced back to one of its two factories. Safariland agreed to replace the defective ones.”- according to the audit.

[Utm]

It is pretty well known that a finger can get into the trigger of light bearing safariland holster. Sounds like they may have been unaware.

[AMC]

The timeline and selection of holsters doesn't make a lot of sense. They had an issue with 7300 series holsters and decided the 6300 series was the cure for access to the trigger in weaponlight holsters? That's literally going backwards. The newer 7TS series holsters were designed to address this problem. Some of them did it too well, and resulted in fitment issues. We sent back a few shipments of 7TS holsters because of fit issues.

Not even getting into the stupidity of that Axon Camera on the gun bullshit.

[SW CQB 45]

We had 7360s that G17s would get stuck and require heavy force to remove.

We were told when the factory formed the holsters, it was done on its side, and this caused the issues with tight holsters.

I was also told that Safariland was changing its forming process where the holster sits vertical as opposed to on its side.

We sent back about 12+ holsters back and it took quite a while to get replacements that work.

This was several years ago.

[Lester Polfus]

One of my big takeaways from this is to stay the hell away from Virginia Beach General Hospital.

[JAH 3rd]

Thanks to all who responded to this topic. Always good to hear from those who carry security holsters and their experiences with same.

[Texaspoff]

I have been carrying a 6360 for a long time, and it is virtually impossible to get to the trigger on my 320 or Glock while in the holster. Now my holsters are non light bearing holsters and this is just another argument against holster designed to carry weapons with lights.

Clearance has to be made so the pistol can be holstered and unholstered with the light. That clearance also give room for fingers and other things to get into the holster with the pistol holstered. It is almost impossible to design it any other way since there has to be clearance for the added light.

This is likely a cause of the recent Milwaukee PD ditching their 320's because of ND incidents by officers. They were also using 6360 LBH as well, which was probably allowing clothing items to get into the holster, and that along with the 320's larger trigger surface area, IMO was directly related to the ND incidents.

Sometimes less is more, and I learned along time ago, the more crap you add or take on, the more chance you have for one of those items to fail or cause an issue. YMMV. There is somethin to be said for KISS in some situations.






TXPO